The modern home & life without cable or telephone.

[Tim Nelson]

I was asked to put together a "picture" so to speak of what kind of products and technologies I would use in my home for communications, entertainment, etc. And the idea is that I would need to find alternative means to get what I would normally get from cable TV, and a home telephone - getting all communications through the data line. So we are talking perhaps a media pc, voip, wifi, things like Roku, Popcorn Hour, nas, etc. There are a lot of new things on the market, but I don't know if there's anything that comfortably replaces cable tv at the moment. What I enjoy having is the channel guide, lots of HD channels, and a DVR. Also with cable you can get local networks, but if you don't have cable then you have to rely on over the air signal - which is great in HD, but you still have to worry about the antenna.

 

I would like to get other peoples opinions as to what their setups would be like, or maybe already are. The budget is not really a factor since we are talking more or less about a theoretical configuration at this point, though there's a chance I might get the opportunity to be a guinea pig for this kind of scenario and have the hardware supplied to me for testing purposes.

 

Is cable on the way out with everything becoming more & more available on the internet? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

The main problem with watching your shows on the internet is that for the most part, they are not real time. Which may or may not be a problem, depending on whether or not you like watching things the night they are released. But even if you don't mind watching them the next day, there is still sports. Not being able to watch sports real time is a problem.

 

I have heard that the NFL is playing around with streaming some of there games real time, so that is promising, though I don't watch the NFL, so not of much use to me. But you have to start somewhere. I guess they were even setting it up so that you could switch the camera to whatever view you proffered, which could be fun.

 

Just last week I was listening to the TWIM or TWIT podcast, not sure which one, and they were talking about a package that Comcast is rolling out. Comcast is going to offer a package to stream to you through the internet, rather than the cable box. Not sure of all the details, and not sure if it was a real time thing or not. If I have a second, I will try and find the podcast.

 

I have never heard of Popcorn, but I have been toying with the idea of building a custom Boxee box for a while now. It seems similar to Popcorn, but is open source, you only need to supply the hard ware of your liking. Whether it is something like an Apple TV box, or custom built PC. Whatever you can come up with. I am thinking if recycling a few old computer parts I have lying around, and build something that will work with Boxee. I ddi a quick Google search, and it looks like Popcorn may only support 720p.

 

Also TWiT has spent a bit of time talking about how a lot of HD tv owners don't even utilize the HD aspects of their TV's. Which is a bit interesting. I guess in some cases people say it just isn't enough of an improvement for them to care.

 

Then you also have Netflix's effort to stream things. Which I am very excited about, though their selection is very limited. But ideally, they will have their entire collection online for instant streaming. I have watched a few, and they load fast. The picture quality isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good, and I am guessing it is somewhere between NTSC and 720p in quality. Though it might scale depending on your download speeds. Not sure about that one either.

Edited July 26, 2009 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[Ricardo Eloy]

Then you also have Netflix's effort to stream things. Which I am very excited about, though their selection is very limited. But ideally, they will have their entire collection online for instant streaming. I have watched a few, and they load fast. The picture quality isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good, and I am guessing it is somewhere between NTSC and 720p in quality. Though it might scale depending on your download speeds. Not sure about that one either.

 

Not to mention Microsoft bringing to the XBox Live network the instant HD streaming. I used Netflix on my XBox360 and it worked great. The pic was actually better then my regular digital cable service. Anyway, MS's offer is a bit diferent from Netflix, for it promises instant access to a HD- 5.1 Dolby movie without loading (even if you want to skip half the movie, for example). If that works like they say it will, along the new Sky service they also anounced on last E3, the 360 is going to be a hell of a system for home video/TV.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I thought Tim's post would generate more interest in the community. Maybe I rambled to much, and people lost interest.

 

Anyway, ....I heard about this today. You can watch real time baseball on your iPhone.

http://www.mlb.com/mobile/iphone/

 

I haven't tried it, so i don't know how legite it is, but it is definitely another step towards the mobile lifestyle.

[Tim Nelson]

Hey guys, thanks for the thoughts. I had never heard of Boxee before, looks interesting.

 

Well the mission has changed a bit, and now it is not a problem of trying to bypass cable & phone. Its simply a list of things that I would like to have at home for my entertainment and communications - kind of like a dream setup for a modern home. So I could have Roku plus cable, plus a Boxee, etc. But it is still an interesting puzzle to see what kinds of things you would get and how you would have it set up. There is not just one thing you could buy at the moment that would do everything that you want it to. The closest thing would be having a pc hooked up to your tv, using something like Boxee or not.

 

The Popcorn Hour still continues to interest me. The newest model, which hasn't shipped yet, looks incredible. And since you can put a blu-ray drive in it, I'm thinking this one would support full HD. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog

 

So many options! I'd love to hear what more people would do in this scenario.

[Tim Nelson]

A couple other things that look cool.

http://moxi.com/us/home.html Super DVR, better than TiVo

 

And since it only has an ethernet port, not wifi, how about this....a ethernet adapter that works by using the electrical lines in your house - just plug it into your router on one end, and into an outlet on the other end. I think will give you faster speeds than wireless, plus more secure. I think its awesome!

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/PLK300 Plug in as many ports as you want.

[Chad Warner]

The linksys thing is cool. I'd read about it awhile back, but hadn't seen any actual products. It's also funny that the reason I would buy one is for my Tivo....my wireless router is way across the other side of the house so the signal strength is not very good. We stream videos from netflix all the time and it can go in and out. This device would be the perfect solution since it would be nightmare to run cat6.

[Tim Nelson]

Not to mention Microsoft bringing to the XBox Live network the instant HD streaming. I used Netflix on my XBox360 and it worked great. The pic was actually better then my regular digital cable service. Anyway, MS's offer is a bit diferent from Netflix, for it promises instant access to a HD- 5.1 Dolby movie without loading (even if you want to skip half the movie, for example). If that works like they say it will, along the new Sky service they also anounced on last E3, the 360 is going to be a hell of a system for home video/TV.

 

Rick, what else can Xbox do in addition to streaming movies? Whats the Sky service you mentioned there? Would you say that Xbox has capabilities that the PS3 doesn't? I like that the PS3 has blu-ray, but now that a lot of movie content is starting to be streamed, maybe having the physical disc in hand is not as important as it once was.

[Ernest Burden III]

You know, all this technology has been around the home a lot longer than we think. My grandparent used to tell me about their in-home entertainment system. It was a 'radio' and it provided scheduled news, sports and entertainment. 'Time shifting' involved going to the bathroom and then asking "what'd I miss?" The radio was huge and glowed beautifully, doing double-duty as a space heater. Everyone would gather 'round and actually watch the thing (despite the pointlessness of doing so). This home entertainment system, in it's early days, was called The Wireless.

 

Otherwise, people enjoyed music by utilizing a piano or other user apps--instruments. They sang together. DRM was controlled by whether or not one bought a vector file--sheetmusic. Then there would be a vast data storage system--a library--that had advanced databasing (Grandmother always knew where any book was because she had been a librarian before marrying) but still allowed full random access. All media was playable on all hardware, though some files might require a new language pack be installed by the reader.

 

Then it would get dark and everybody would go to bed.

[Tim Nelson]

That was great Ernest. I wish it was that simple still.

[Ricardo Eloy]

Rick, what else can Xbox do in addition to streaming movies? Whats the Sky service you mentioned there? Would you say that Xbox has capabilities that the PS3 doesn't? I like that the PS3 has blu-ray, but now that a lot of movie content is starting to be streamed, maybe having the physical disc in hand is not as important as it once was.

 

Well, I usually stream photos, movies and music from my PC to the XBox, which is also connected to the sound system (my living room is soooo big it can't handle even the idea of a proper home theater).

The Sky service is actually broadcasting TV channels (those available via satellite dishes) directly to the XBox via the internet, which is the same as IPTV. That means one could watch ESPN right from the console, without having to subscribe to a regular cable service.

Also, on August XBox users will have access to Last.fm via console, meaning one could set a personal online radio station.(not to mention Twitter and Facebook access).

I agree about the physical media getting not so crucial in the next few years. Ok, when you get blu-ray you have tons of extras and stuff, but for the majority of peeps, the movie is the only thing that matters, so if you can have the same video/audio quality without having to leave your couch (nor dropping some extra bucks), what's the point of having a 40GB disc? I would love to simply dl the content I want, instead of paying for the whole package at once.